<p>The 1 thru 9 rating system involves some combination of SAT scores, class rank, type of high school, etc. etc.</p>
<p>From perusing some excellent entries on the Ephblog, I believe that 1’s involve SATs above 1520 and matching class rank. Virtually all academic 1’s are accepted.</p>
<p>I think 2’s are SATs between 1450 and 1520, again with a high class rank relative to the type of school.</p>
<p>I have not seen a definition of an academic 3, but that is “average” for non-tipped athletes in the freshman class and I’ve also seen reference to legacies now needing to have SATs of 1400 or above. So I would logically infer that academic 3s are SATs between 1400 and 1450. This includes the group of 32 “protects” that the athletic department can select.</p>
<p>The 66 tips are the below average admits, chosen by the athletic department. At one time a coach proposed allowing 20 of these as academic 7s and 40 of them as academic 5s and 6s. I believe that with the recent push to raise the standards, the current agreed upon formula only allows 10 academic 7s. I did find the cutoff for a 7. SATs between 1150 and 1250.</p>
<p>The athletic department can distribute these 66 below average slots among the various teams as they see fit. They have total control over who is admitted, as long as the distribution of those they select matches the agreed upon parameters (ten 7s, yadda, yadda). The lowest academic admits are generally allocated to the men’s football and hockey teams. The higher academic slots from this group of 66 would be sprinkled around among the other teams. </p>
<p>Many teams mirror the academic profile of the school as a whole and really aren’t a point of contention as far as academics.</p>
<p>“I did find the cutoff for a 7. SATs between 1150 and 1250.”</p>
<p>I think that is really astonishing. From my own perspective particularly since my son, a Williams legacy, was advised by the Williams admissions office to retake the SAT’s (with the expectation that his score would go up in a second seating). He had a 1460 in his first and only seating, and SAT IIs of 800/780/740. It is as though they needed a 1500 from him to allow these other admits.</p>
<p>He thought Williams was nuts and had no intention of re-taking the SAT (with my blessing). In any event he liked other schools more and applied elsewhere ED.</p>
<p>Here is the correct information. Academic 3’s (not 2’s) generally have SAT scores between 1450 and 1520. I know this from having worked directly with the admissions office. Also please see the following article…</p>
<p>“Critics may argue that if protects, or ultra high band admits (roughly 1450-1520 SAT range), were included then Williams would fall more in line with the group. (the number of athletic priority slots would increase from 66 to 81 if you consider protects to be half of a tip as admissions does).”</p>
<p>“1. Adopt the new NESCAC policy of 2.5 athletic priority matriculants per sport, but with some restrictions. The allocation and range of admits would be as follows: 20 in the low band (7 admissions reader rating/1150-1250 SATs range), 40 in the middle band (5 or 6 admissions reader ratings/1250-1400 SATs range), 21 in an expanded high band (3 or 4 admissions reader ratings/1400-1500 SATs range) plus 12 protects (3 admissions reader rating/1450-1500 SAT range) - the latter band to be distributed primarily among individual sports with a tradition of being able to compete with higher achieving academic talent. This formula would allow athletics to give admissions back 7 slots while maintaining an average reader rating of 4.9, 1/10 of a point below where it was 3 years ago.”</p>
<p>A point of confusion is whether the academic 3’s are between 1450-1500 or between 1450-1520. Academic 4’s are between 1400 - 1450</p>
<p>40% of Williams freshman class in the fall of 2003 had SAT verbal scores below 700. Yet, your legacy son, who was well above their average SAT and comfortably above their median SAT was advised to raise his score.</p>
<p>Schools don’t want to let their stats fall or they’ll lose academic prestige. Yet, there are legitimate reasons to accept low stat kids: be it athletics, diversity, or just because you want some interesting kids that may not fit the mold.</p>
<p>The hard choices really boil down to deciding how many low-stat slots you want to allow and how do you want to invest them.</p>
<p>Football is the biggie when it comes to consuming mass quantities of low-stat slots. Simple fact of the matter is that there aren’t many high school football players who can rack up a 1400 on the SATs and those that can have Havard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford beating down their doors. The problem becomes really acute at small liberal arts colleges where a football squad is a signficant percentage of the entire male student body.</p>
<p>Don’t you think that you are a tad unfair to Williams?</p>
<p>It really seems like your negativity toward the place is growing by the day. </p>
<p>You know as well as I that Williams excels in many areas other than athletics and art history. The academic qualifications of each incoming class continue to improve.</p>
<p>See the most recent common data sets of Williams, and let’s compare with Swarthmore. SAT scores are virtually identical despite Williams’ recruiting practices and the fact that Williams has a greater percentage of URMs ( a group traditionally composed of lower scoring students)</p>
<p>Williams SAT 1330 -1520
Swarthmore 1350 - 1530</p>
<p>ID: I’m still wondering where you get the data to back up statements such as: “there aren’t many high school football players who can rack up a 1400 on the SATs”. (There aren’t many non-football players racking up 1400, either). Um, but ok, so how many 1400 football players are there? Remove “football players” from your statement and insert “women” (or the URM of your choice) and you would be howling about “bigotry,” I suspect.</p>
<p>I think interestedDad means recruiting within certain academic parameters.</p>
<p>Listen, ID, Williams IS trying to correct for past admissions errors. But if you keep portraying Williams as a school full of beer-guzzling dummies, its strives for academic growth will be that much more difficult. Get it?</p>
<p>As a former graduate and varsity athlete, I find your comments unfair and offensive. The majority of athletes at Williams are excellent students. In fact, my SAT scores were higher than those of your daughter (You divulged her scores last spring) , and my parents did not have the opportunity to attend a school like Williams. In fact, they didn’t attend college at all. Athletics undoubtedly helped me gain admission to Williams, and I appreciate everything I derived my education there. I still keep in touch with many of my professors.</p>
<p>I respect your criticism, but increasingly you seem to be veering away from presenting a balanced view of the place. </p>
<p>Jrpar, I think it is ridiculous that the admissions staff told your son to re-take the SATs. A 1460 is a perfectly respectable score, and I think the admissions staff IS becoming increasingly score conscious. This is mainly driven by the USNews frenzy.</p>
<p>I hadn’t read it yet! Thanks for the correction and the link to Coach Barnard’s proposal. I hadn’t been able to find it.</p>
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<p>Of course. Someone had asked for a positive about Williams, and I posted one. In my opinion, a student interested in an art history/museum curator career should view Williams as the absolute best choice in the country. That’s pretty positive.</p>
<p>My view is that, for most majors, Williams would be among the very best schools in the country and should definitely be considered if the location and campus culture is a good fit. I, personally, worked my daughter for over 2.5 years to get her to add Williams to her short list. Something I was finally successful in doing.</p>
<p>I actually spent most of that 2.5 years refusing to believe the guidebooks’ and my wife’s (the active alum) characterization of the college as a jock school. But, it is hard to argue otherwise based on the percentages of varsity athletes and the clear domination of Div. III nationally.</p>
<p>I applaud Shapiro’s recent efforts to reign in both the number and degree of low-band athletic admits over the past three or four years. Clearly, this had become a hot-button issue from his comments that the athletic emphasis was the most common question he fielded from the alums.</p>
<p>No. I view athletic recruiting, even at very low academic standards as entirely legitimate – if it is consistent with the overall strategic direction and the size of the college or university. For example, it doesn’t really matter if the football players can even read or write at the University of Miami, because they represent such a small percentage of the student body.</p>
<p>I do think that small, academically-elite liberal arts colleges have a very unique problem because low-band recruiting can very quickly have a significant impact on the campus environment. The problem is almost entirely centered around the size of the high-profile “helmet sports” teams in relation to the size of the male student body. The fact that being competitive in Div III football now requires unprecendented recruiting makes the challenge even greater. Of course, the problem became instantly more difficult when all of the New England LACs became coed, with a smaller male population to support the same number of teams.</p>
<p>I’m not sure my daughter would have gotten into Williams. With only median SATs, and no varsity sports potential, they might well have told her the same thing they told JRPAR’s son.</p>
<p>Well … I think telling someone to re-take their SATs is very different than telling someone that they won’t be accepted unless their SAT scores go up.
The acceptance rate for legacies hovers around 50%, so I would have been surprised if your daughter and JrPar’s son were not accepted. Williams is very very very generous to legacies. </p>
<p>I’m not crazy about some of the admissions staff at Williams. In fact, I think some are pretty clueless, not to mention unprofessional and generally mean.</p>
<p>Also, keep in mind that Williams is putting an enormous amount of effort into diversifying their campus. 10% of Williams students are African-American and 9% are Latino. These percentages are enormously high given Williams’ location and the fact that it is relatively unknown. It’s great that Williams is becoming such a diverse place, but it also means that the “score requirements” are loosened. Williams wants to be diverse, have strong athletics, be generous to legacies and maintain high SAT scores. Something has to eventually give.</p>
<p>Right - just to clarify - the admissions office was “advising” my son to retake the SAT’s to present the best possible profile for admissions; not saying if your score doesn’t go up you won’t get in. I think they were trying to be “helpful”. But even then, it seems pretty silly. So what if his scores had gone up the 40-50 points as frequently happens in second seatings - it just doesn’t seem all that significant and it makes the school seem very score-obsessed. It made me wonder why? As ID says above “Bingo”.</p>
<p>Williams admissions is actually very much NOT score obsessed–Williams puts particular focus on admissions candidates that excel in academic as well as non-academic areas. As sports tend to be the most high-profile non-academic area and there is so much stigma attached to “jocks,” this is what often is discussed. However, the athletic success and “emphasis” at Williams is probably more a reflection on the amount of weight admissions gives to all extracurriculars, than to the amount of weight admissions gives to athletics in particular. </p>
<p>One program at Williams which is rarely spoken about is its music program. The Berkshire Symphony (half student, half professional) is one of the best student symphonies in the country, and there are countless musical opportunities for the student musician at Williams. The amount of musical talent at Williams is outstanding–there are numerous musicians at Williams who could be attending a top conservatory or school of music if they had so chosen. I speak of the musical offerings because this is one extracurricular that I am particularly involved with. However, the drama and art programs are equally as amazing and also filled with extremely talented students. It’s unfortunate that discussions of Williams (especially on this board) so frequently turn into a critique of athletics at Williams, because there are so many other extracurricular areas that Williams excells in. Williams is arguably the best school in the country for the student-athlete, a fact which is both trumpeted and condemned by alumns. However, Williams is also arguably the best school in the country for the student (non-major)-musician, the student-artist, the student leader, and numerous other types of students (including the student purely interested in academics). I think instead of focusing on merely one area of student extracurricular pursuits (athletics), we should be discussing all of the extracurricular opportunities available to Williams students, as the majority of prospective and admitted students are not athletes.</p>
<p>Haon, did you actually read the posts above before you launched off on yet another Williams is the best speech?! I would agree that the posts about athletics at Williams don’t necessarily serve the school well with prospective students, but I also think the relentless one-sidedness of your posts doesn’t help either. I love Williams, I think there are lots of great things going on on campus today, it would be my first choice today if I were applying today, but no one school is perfect or the best at everything. </p>
<p>I have no idea whether Williams admissions is or is not score obsessed. All I can point to is one example that certainly makes you wonder. Why do you think admissions advised my son to try to increase his SAT’s from 1460?</p>
<p>(And by the way, Williams was on his list because of its art and art history department. In addition to being an three sport varsity athlete, he’s an artist. I’m well aware that athletes can be multi-talented).</p>
<p>I think the absolute best thing that a school can do to attract large numbers of happy productive students is to have a very well defined clear identity. In my opinion, Williams’ identity as the liberal arts college for top-notch academics and championship level athletics is the reason for its popularity. I don’t think it’s a negative at all from the school’s perspective.</p>
<p>It’s not everybody’s cup of tea. But, that’s true of any school with a clearly defined identity.</p>
<p>I suspect that Haon’s writings are aimed to combat some of the anti-Williams sentiment that is so prevalent on these boards.</p>
<p>Again, of the admissions staff that I have encountered throughout my admittedly brief post-college experience, Williams’ certainly ranks in the bottom half. They’re not exactly what I would call the best sales people. </p>
<p>I have no idea why they told your son to re-take a 1460. There is no doubt in my mind that Williams is very score focused, and I think this is a result of two major factors. First, as ID pointed out schools like to maintain high SAT scores for academic prestige reasons. People tend to link high SAT scores with better students and better schools. </p>
<p>Secondly, Williams has refined this academic point system to ensure that only X number of recruited athletes within certain parameters are admitted. They only want to admit 10 low-band admits per year (academic 6’s and 7’s). Coaches do NOT have the ability to admit whomever they want within certain parameters. It seems that Williams has developed these psuedo-quotas for everyone ranging from varsity athletes to musicians to legacies to african americans. These substrata of students must fit neatly into the academic categories established by the admissions offices. For example, they might decide that they will only accept X number of legacies with academic scores of 3 or below. I have no doubt that the athletics debate was the primary impetus behind this rigid academic classification system.</p>
<p>JrPar, it appears that your son would fit the qualifications of an academic 3. He would have to compete with other legacies who also happen to be academic 3’s. (I’m sure most are accepted, but some probably aren’t.) If he bumped his score up to a 1520, he would be an academic 2, and the admissions office would have no problem admitting him. </p>
<p>The admissions office also may have told him to re-take the SAT because with higher scores he may have had more options from which to choose. They may have thought of their advice as charitable.Though I’m inclined to believe the former explanation rather than the latter to be true.</p>
<p>Sorry MikeyD - as I wrote my post I suspected I would regret posting it. Having followed Haon’s one-note postings for more than a year, I responded when I should have just let it pass. </p>
<p>I posted the anecdote re: my son because I think it is curious, and I think your analysis (and ID’s) is correct. I don’t have any beef with the admissions office. My son picked another school for ED for his own reasons and the admissions process went well for him.</p>